HAVING A HIGH OLD TIME WITH THE SNOW BOYS
There are highs and lows to a skiing holiday. The getting to the slopes, the fitting of the ski boots, the acquiring of the lift pass, the queuing for the lifts. And let’s not forget the lowest of the low points – the opening of the wallet.
But then come the highs. Soaring weightless down a mountain on fresh virgin powder, carving twin tracks of grey on white. The silence of the forest as you schuss past tall pine trees. The sight of an ironware dish of tartiflette – a lite bite composed of cheese, cream, potato and bacon – arriving table-side at a gemutlich hostelry on the slopes. The sense of relief when finally, at the end of a long day on the mountain, you can remove those ski boots…
I didn’t think it was possible to do a ski holiday any differently, but then I had a ski holiday that had only highs.
Le Grand Joux is a chalet near a hamlet called Graydon in the Portes du Soleil in the French Alps, though when I say near it’s not near anywhere. It’s off-grid, and has its own water supply and generator. So say goodbye to industrialised winter sports and let me introduce you to a new concept.
Now, you’ve heard of chalet girls, I take it? Capable, busty Sloanes who fetch croissants, clean, go skiing, then race back to slam cakes and casseroles in the oven, and are endlessly elastic and cheerful?
Well, at Le Grand Joux they don’t do chalet girls. Instead they have Snow Boys – young ski-gods with hipster facial hair and rigger boots – who meet you at the airport to take you on ‘ski safari’.
They sling your luggage into the Land Rover at Geneva, and then drive you into the Alps on hairpin roads that peter out. And then they unpack it all again for the last leg of the journey, during which you sit, muffled in fur rugs, feeling like the White Witch in Narnia, on skidoos or on a customised Can-Am 1000 (a sort of all-ter-
rain caterpillar tractor) to take you to a remote, rustic, but de luxe former auberge.
The Snow Boys will also bring you tea in bed in the morning, put on your warmed ski boots and take you off to the slopes. One of the few things they don’t do is fly the Mont Blanc helicopter. This landed after breakfast by the wood pile to pick us up, so we didn’t even have to walk to the first run. Nor do they work in the spa, where there is a gourmet chef, space-age beds and tanks, therapists, an indoor pool, and outdoor wood-burner sauna, and a hot tub.
After a day in the cold, you come back to the glamorous but eco-friendly chalet that’s decked out in wood, leather and furs, and eat cake by a log fire before dragging your carcass down to be pummelled, boiled and so on in the ‘wellness centre’.
So I’m all for high-only ski holidays – kicking back in a hot tub, as a light snow falls, the flakes sizzling as they hit the water, and a Snow Boy emerges from the chalet, a bottle of chilled champagne on a tray. Why do it any other way?